Random Bytes...by Ross Rader

Wednesday, August 6

[11:28PM EDT]

Yay! After much work, I'm finally down to zero in my inbox. No unanswered messages, nothing left untracked. I added a few remaining Todo's from my mail into RTM, so I haven't done all the work, but the big thing is that *nothing* is in my inbox right now! Yay!

Of course, now I need to do something about this...

Maybe after we launch our next release. :-)

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Wednesday, July 30

[11:12PM EDT]

Just got word from our breeder that our standard poodle puppy was born today. She comes from a litter of 7 puppies - three of which are female. We haven't picked which one we want yet, so we don't know if she'll be red or apricot.

We already have a poodle/retriever cross (a golden doodle) puppy (9 months old) and we wanted to get him a friend that he could play with during the day when we're not around. All of our pets have had "mates" over the years and we find that the animals are generally happier (or so we think!)

We decided on a poodle instead of a doodle because we didn't want to take any chances with shedding. Some doodles shed (its not a real breed, so the characteristics of each animal are slightly different) and we're really quite happy not having to sweep up piles and piles of hair from around the house.

Our new pup will be coming home sometime late September. We'll probably be able to go out and pick her out in 3-4 weeks or so. C | T (59) | #

Wednesday, July 23

[12:30AM EDT]

Brian Manley:

Ugh. Investor picked the worst domain name ever for our site. Might as well have been we-suck-do-not-use-us-ever.com

Classic.

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Wednesday, July 16

[10:24AM EDT]

Balaji Dutt:

based on current volume of files i'm syncing i would pay 8 cents/month for amazon s3 vs 80 cents/months for godaddy filefolder - nice!

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Tuesday, July 15

[04:44PM EDT]

DIY no weld tandem bicycle - Su-weet!

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Monday, July 14

[10:15AM EDT]

Tracee:

PS. Calling it a premium domain name doesn't make it worth 3,890 dollars.

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Sunday, July 13

[04:04PM EDT]

From the "how-to-wreck-an-otherwise-enjoyable-movie" department...

Indiana Jones and the Fonts on the Maps:

Whenever Indy is traveling great distances, which happens in all the films, there is a montage of the airplane or boat superimposed over an animated map showing the route. It’s an old-fashioned convention, an homage to the movies of the Thirties and Forties. Unfortunately, the typefaces would be more at home a few decades later.

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[02:53PM EDT]

The Brains Behind the Image Fulgurator

The Fulgurator lies in wait until an unsuspecting photographer takes a picture using a flash. When the device's sensor sees this flash, it fires its own unit, throwing up an image which is captured by the hapless photographer's camera while remaining unseen by the naked eye.

This is awesome and I want one. Even if the inventor does look like a caveman.

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[10:36AM EDT] Now this is a really useful domain name management tool. Is your DNS or website screwed up or is it your internet connection? This tool will help you sort out the answer.

Can you really be sure that a website is down and that the problem isn't just your connection? Well, now you can. There's a new free online tool to do just that. It's called, appropriately enough, DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com.

(Via .)

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[10:29AM EDT] Came across a couple of neat domain lookup tools this week. The first is a Firefox extension which looks okay, but doesn't include Tucows OpenSRS or IYD in its list of registrars.

Domain Lookup Firefox Extension: "Domain Lookup is a Firefox extension that helps you discover valuable generic domain names while surfing the web."

DLF mentions lookup privacy in passing - I'd be really cautious in any event. Domain Name Frontrunning is real and could cost you valuable domain names.

The other tool comes via Jon Lax - Domize, a fairly nifty little web-based look up tool allows you to search for your favorite domain name in real-time via a configurable list of default registrars. The list of registrars is fairly small, and I found their UI a bit confusing, but the realtime search was pretty useful. Domize doesn't really say a lot about lookup privacy - until I learn more about who they are and whether or not they absolutely guarantee that they won't use the search input for anything but whois lookups, I'll probably be steering clear.

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